WASHINGTON, [DC]--On June 3, 2014, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. restarted a long-dormant domestic terrorism task force created after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. A former Ku Klux Klan leader had just murdered three people near a Jewish Community Center in a Kansas City suburb and yelled “Heil Hitler” as police took him into custody. For too long, Holder said, the federal government had narrowly focused on Islamist threats and had lost sight of the “continued danger we face” from violent far-right extremists. But three years later, it is unclear what, if anything the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee has done, despite expectations that its reanimation would better focus

UNITED STATES, [US]--The criminal charges coming out of the Charlottesville, Va., last month, may perfectly describe the offenses – murder, discharging a firearm, malicious wounding – but the term terrorism is not mentioned. The United States doesn’t have a domestic terrorism charge that can be lodged against individuals or organizations that operate wholly within the country. The FBI doesn’t have a unit specifically dedicated to tracking the violent extreme right. In September, the Justice Department’s State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) program, which has trained more than 142,000 law enforcement officers in how to deal with domestic terrorists, will run out of fundin

WASHINGTON, [DC]--As Charlottesville, Va., struggles to recover from last weekend’s deadly violence and authorities warn of increased threats from domestic extremists, the Justice Department is quietly shutting down a program that trains officers on combating terrorism. The State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program, which has served more than 142,000 law enforcement officers in every state in the country, has run out of funding. Its last day is Sept. 30. “It makes absolutely no sense,” said Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, which represents a network of 79 centers across the country designed to help law enforcement agencies collect and share terroris

UNITED STATES, [US]--At a press conference on August 15, President Donald Trump stood in the gold-encrusted lobby of Manhattan’s Trump Tower and refused to put the sole blame on white supremacists for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend (which included the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, as well as others injured, after a driver plowed into a crowd). Speaking to several reporters, the president argued that the so-called “alt-left” — a term created to create a false equivalence between those on the “alt-right” (which is essentially a rebranding of white supremacy) and from activists opposing fascism — brought comparable levels of hate and violence to rece

UNITED STATES, [US]--The violent clashes in Charlottesville last week between armed white supremacists on one side and far-left militants have in many ways further complicated the American political landscape, in part by turning a militant fringe anarchist movement into a household name. In his rally in Phoenix on Wednesday, Donald Trump used the bully pulpit to name the group. "You know, they show up in the helmets and the black masks, and they've got clubs and they've got everything — Antifa!" The group was credited with the Berkeley riots in April where they caused $100,000 in property damage. Anti-fascists were part of the violent demonstrations in February at the G-20 Summit in Hambur

UNITED STATES, [US]--The death of 32-year-old anti-racist protester Heather Heyer at the hands of a white supremacist on Saturday was the most recent of at least 65 fatal incidents perpetrated by right-wing extremists in the United States since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The incident in Charlottesville is indicative of how far-right extremist violence has surged in the intervening years, as federal law enforcement efforts have shifted attention toward the threat posed by jihadist terrorism, former counter-terrorism officials and experts say. Conservative media and Republican politicians who oppose federal crackdowns on far-right extremist ideologues encouraged this shift, and presidents fro

UNITED STATES, [US]--As Charlottesville, Va., struggles to recover from last weekend’s deadly violence and authorities warn of increased threats from domestic extremists, the Justice Department is quietly shutting down a program that trains officers on combating terrorism. The State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program, which has served more than 142,000 law enforcement officers in every state in the country, has run out of funding. Its last day is Sept. 30. “It makes absolutely no sense,” said Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, which represents a network of 79 centers across the country designed to help law enforcement agencies collect and share terro

UNITED STATES, [US]--To avoid enlisting neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists, military recruiters are told to watch for tattoos showing barbed wire, hobnailed boots and hammers. Also to look for tattoos of lightning bolts, skulls and swastikas. “There is no place for racial hatred or extremism in the Marine Corps,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said Tuesday. Those comments, like those of the other service chiefs who denounced bigotry following the “Unite the Right” rally that brought white men bearing torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us” to Charlottesville, Va., reaffirmed military policies forbidding extremist advocacy or participation. I

UNITED STATES, [US]--If you're not sure how heated our current political climate is, just look at the top searches on Merriam-Webster: "Top lookups right now: fascism, bigot, racism, complicit, neo-Nazi, nationalism," it tweeted. But much of today's rhetoric uses words that aren't even in the dictionary. Alt-right. "Alt-left." Antifa. The list goes on. Here's a glossary of phrases infiltrating our political vocabulary. Daryl Johnson, a former counterterrorism expert for the Department of Homeland Security, said recent policies are aligning with the wishes of white supremacists. "The anti-immigration xenophobia is rising," said Johnson, owner of domestic terror monitoring group DT Analytics.

UNITED STATES--Americans were aghast at the display of anarchy in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, but the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had issued repeated warnings about the threats associated with newly energized right-wing extremists. As recently as May, the FBI and DHS issued a joint intelligence bulletin to state and local police, warning that the "white supremacist extremist movement … likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year." "This has been a slow and steady buildup and ratcheting up of heated rhetoric and violence," says Daryl Johnson, a counterterrorism expert formerly at the Department of Homeland Security. "The unificat